The invention disclosed herein relates generally to automated mail sorting and more particularly, a method of post processing addressee information using a keyword database to determine the intended mailpiece destination.
The processing and handling of mailpieces consumes an enormous amount of human and financial resources, particularly if the processing of the mailpieces is done manually. The processing and handling of mailpieces not only takes place at the Postal Service, but also occurs at each and every business or other site where communication via the mail delivery system is utilized. That is, various pieces of mail generated by a plurality of departments and individuals within a company need to be addressed, collected, sorted and franked as part of the outgoing mail process. Additionally, incoming mail needs to be collected and sorted efficiently to ensure that it gets to the addressee (i.e. employee or department) in a minimal amount of time. Since much of the documentation and information being conveyed through the mail system is critical in nature relative to the success of a business, it is imperative that the processing and handling of both the incoming and outgoing mailpieces be done efficiently and reliably so as not to negatively impact the functioning of the business.
Various automated mail handling machines have been developed for processing incoming mail (removing individual pieces of mail from a stack and performing subsequent actions on each individual piece of mail). Generally, the mail handling machines separate individual mailpieces from a stack, read the mailpieces using an optical character recognition (OCR) system and compare the read information to an addressee database in order to determine the appropriate destination points for delivery of the mailpieces. Some of the incoming mail received at a mailroom of the company can be unreadable by the OCR system, the quantity of which can be great since recipients cannot control the addressee format in which the incoming mail is received. Some of the unreadable mail could be, for example, mail which is not OCR readable xe2x80x9cOCR rejectsxe2x80x9d (i.e. smeared or needs to be opened to determine addressee), xe2x80x9cmystery mailxe2x80x9d which mail with no particular addressee (i.e. mail addressed to a company or department only or mail with poor quality handwriting), or xe2x80x9cresearch mailxe2x80x9d (i.e. mail that can not be read by OCR but does not require opening for the operator to determine the addressee, including the situation where there are several potential addressees with the same name). The unreadable mail, which will be referred to generally as xe2x80x9creject mailxe2x80x9d is expensive to process since it drains the resources of the mail room requiring additional time and labor for sorting and delivery. Therefore, it would be helpful if the mailpieces for which an intended recipient has not been identified could be processed additionally, quickly and in an automated fashion so as not to encumber the resources of the mailroom.
Previously, if a determination could not be made by the incoming mail handling machine as to the addressee, a video image of the mailpiece was viewed by an operator and in the case where the addressee image was readable by the operator, addressee information was keyed into the system and associated with an identification number for the mailpiece. This is typically done after the unreadable mailpieces are sorted into a reject bin because it requires time to make the determination and provide the information to the system for proper sorting. The previously rejected mailpieces are then resorted by reading the identification information which can be printed on the mail during the first sort. The identification information is linked with the addressee information manually keyed in by the operator during the reject processing/video coding sequence and is used to sort the mailpiece to the proper destination bin.
Video processing of mailpieces has been performed at on-site video coding terminals or off-site video coding facilities where the video image is transmitted for determination of addressee by an operator. The information is then transferred back to the sorting apparatus. The software and hardware costs associated with video processing can be high because video coding requires additional computer systems, image servers and workstations. Additionally, licensing fees for video coding software can be expensive. Video coding can also be labor intensive because the operator has to input information using a keyboard. While predictive keying can be used, the operator is still bogged down with using his or her hands to input addressee information. Thus, a separate video coding operator is needed in apart from the incoming mailpiece sorting apparatus operator in order to keep throughput on the sorting apparatus while processing rejects.
Thus one of the problems of the prior art is that a system is not available for providing additional automated identification of addressees or destinations. Another problem of the prior art is that a system is not available which provides higher throughput and decreased labor costs. Another problem of the prior art is that is can be expensive. Yet another problem of the prior art is that incoming mail handling machines do not include additional functionality for using automation to determine the intended recipient. Therefore, a method of processing mailpieces with unidentifiable addressees (rejects) is needed which integrates reject processing with the mailpiece sorting apparatus with increased read rates and with greater throughput.
This invention overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art by providing a method of processing reject mailpieces with better throughput and lower labor costs. This in turn affords quicker mailpiece processing. The present invention is directed, in general to automated mailpiece sorting apparatus and more particularly, a method of processing rejected mailpieces using an automated mailpiece sorting apparatus with a customer specific (i.e. employer/company using the mail sorting apparatus) keyword database and processing addressee information to increase the identification rate of the intended recipient(s) of mailpieces. The mailpiece sorting apparatus may generally comprise a feeder, a scanner, a mailpiece deliverer, compartments or bins for receiving sorted mailpieces, optical character recognition system (OCR) for reading addressee information, a personal computer (PC) or microprocessor based control system, recipient matching software and an addressee database. The mailpiece sorting apparatus of the present invention also comprises a customer specific keyword database for post OCR processing of mailpieces.
In an embodiment of the present invention, mailpieces are sorted by the mailpiece sorting apparatus during a first-pass sort (i.e. on first pass mailpieces are divided into available bins, on next pass, mailpieces from one or more bins of the first pass are resorted into available bins). Mailpieces that can be read and addressees identified using the OCR system or the post OCR processing application are sent to their designated sort bins. Mailpieces that the mailpiece sorting apparatus OCR system and post OCR processing application cannot determine the recipient for (xe2x80x9crejectsxe2x80x9d) are sent to a reject bin. Once the first pass sorting is completed, the rejects may be processed using a reject sorting mode such as video coding, manual identification or voice recognition system or other system determined by one of ordinary skill in the art using factors such as cost and throughput.
An advantage of the method of the present invention is that it provides higher throughput with minimal additional hardware, software and labor costs. Another additional advantage of the present invention is that there is higher throughput of sorted mailpieces. Another advantage of the present invention is that it allows for additional automated processing. Other advantages of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part be apparent from the specification. The aforementioned advantages are illustrative of the advantages of the various embodiments of the present invention.